Obama and the World: One Year Later

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30 March, 2010

The United Nations University Office at the UN, New York (UNU-ONY) is organizing a Midday Forum entitled 'Obama and the World: One Year Later' with Tom Farer, Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

What kind of benchmarks can be used to assess the performance of Obama's foreign policy?
What has Obama's foreign policy accomplished thus far?
What are the main challenges Obama will face on both the domestic and international fronts in terms of achieving the goals set out in his foreign policy agenda?

These are some of the issues that Dean Farer will discuss in the context of his later paper 'Obama's Foreign Policy: Bridging Expectations-Capability Gap'.
The Q&A session following the presentation will be moderated by UNU's Director Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud.
The event is part of the UNU Midday Forum Programme, which offers an intimate and informal platform of discussion to the UN Permanent Missions, the UN Secretariat, UN agencies, academia, NGOs and the private sector, to discuss and exchange ideas and experiences on important topics related to the UN.

Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Time: 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Venue: Conference Room B, Temporary North Lawn Building (TNLB), UN Headquarters

Watch the video from UNU Video Portal

For the full size version click here

Speakers' Profile
Tom Farer, Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver
Jean-Marc Coicaud, Director, UNU-ONY

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Event Pictures

Event Report:

Obama and the world: Event report (pdf format)

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Background Readings:

Obama's Foreign Policy: Bridging Expectations-Capability Gap- PDF
Enhancing International Cooperation: Between History and Necessity.pdf- PDF
Tom Farer's Liberal World Order.pdf- Book Review - PDF
Tom Farer's Crisis of U.S. Liberalism.pdf- Book Review - PDF

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Tom Farer, Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, is the former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS), the first American ever to head a principal organ of the OAS. He has also served as president of the University of New Mexico. Currently he is honorary professor of Peking University and director of the Center for China-United States Cooperation. Within the United States government, he has served as special assistant first to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and then to the assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs. He has taught law at Columbia University, American University, Rutgers, Tulane and Harvard and international relations at Cambridge University, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. And he has been a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Dean Farer has published 12 books and monographs and over 100 articles and book chapters primarily concerning issues of international and comparative law, foreign policy, human rights and international institutions. His most recent book, Confront Global Terrorism and American Neo-Conservatism: The Framework of a Liberal Grand Strategy, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2008. His articles have appeared in such journals as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York and London Review of Books, International Organization, World Politics and the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews. Shorter pieces have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Washington Post. He has lectured widely at universities and research centers in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Japan and China.

Dean Farer has studied processes of economic and political development outside Europe and North American and has also been a participant. He has taught criminal law and procedure and unarmed self-defense to an African police force and assisted in Uganda's constitutional revision process in 1994-95. He has also studied the operations of international organizations and in 1993 served as legal consultant to the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). In that capacity, he investigated the attacks on UN forces and submitted a report to the UN Security Council. In 1980, he participated in the successful resolution of the hostage crisis arising from the occupation of the Dominican Embassy in Bogota, Colombia by members of the M-19 guerilla organization.

At present, he serves on the board of the Social Science Foundation, the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch/Americas and the editorial boards of Human Rights Quarterly and the American Journal of International Law, and on the editorial advisory boards of the Chinese Journal of International Law and the Strategic Studies Quarterly. He is married and has two children and claims to play tennis with more passion than skill, to play golf with barely controllable passion, and to ski with excessive prudence. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and The Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C.

Dean Farer is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton and the Harvard Law School where he served as Note Editor of the Law Review. In his final year at Harvard he was appointed clerk for Judge Learned Hand.

Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud is Director of the United Nations University Office at the United Nations Headquarters, (UNU-ONY). He was Senior Academic Officer and Director of Studies at the UNU headquarters (Tokyo) from 1996 to 2003. From 1992 to 1996, he served in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General as a speechwriter for Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali. A former fellow at Harvard University (Center for International Affairs, Department of Philosophy and Harvard Law School, from 1986 to 1992), Coicaud has held appointments such as Cultural Attaché with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Legislative Aide with the European Parliament (Financial Committee). He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure-Ulm in Paris and has taught at the New School for Social Research (New York). In addition, he has been a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (Washington, D.C.), a Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law and a Visiting Scholar at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University (Beijing). Coicaud holds a Ph.D. in Political Science-Law from the Sorbonne and a Doctorat d'Etat in philosophy from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris. He also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature and linguistics.

Jean-Marc Coicaud has published books in the fields of comparative politics, political and legal theory, international relations and international law. They are available in English, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic, and include the following single-authored books: L'introuvable démocratie autoritaire (L'Harmattan, 1996), Légitimité et Politique (Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), Politics and Legitimacy: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2002), Beyond the National Interest (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), Kokuren no Genkai/Kokuren no Mirai (Future of the UN/Limits of the UN - Fujiwara Shoten, 2007), Mai Xiang Guo Ji Fa Zhi (Towards the International Rule of Law - Sanlian Shudian, 2008). His latest book, co-edited with Hilary Charlesworth, is Fault Lines of International Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Jean-Marc Coicaud is now finishing two new single-authored books, Kissing War Goodbye, and Knowledge and International Institutions.

Jean-Marc Coicaud is a member of the Advisory Board of the Carnegie Council's Global Policy Innovations (New York). He also serves as an adviser for the Fondation pour l'Innovation Politique (Paris).

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Page last modified Last modified: May 18 2010 at 10:40:23 AM.

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30 March, 2010